The Ghosts of Halloweens Past
by draggon-flye
Summary: Tim takes the twins and Donny to visit Tony on Halloween


**A/N: **This is my Halloween offering. It was meant to be a birthday prezzie fic for Sasha1600. It's a bit late, but better late than never. No warnings for once.

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><p>When the knock on his door came persistently for a third time, Tony roused himself from the position where he'd fallen, exhausted, on his sofa after being up for more than 36 hours straight, grumbling. He hated Halloween. It was bad enough that every idiot in the DC Metro area had bumbled their way into his investigation at some point over the past two days. Now, these morons couldn't even comprehend the universal rules for trick-or-treating. His porch light was off. That meant no candy. That meant go away. He snatched the door open just as the offender was about to knock for a fourth time and promptly burst out laughing. Donny Palmer, thin and gangly at 12, stood on his front stoop with Leigh and Katie McGee crowded in behind. Donny held an impressive, if comical resemblance, to Albert Einstein. The wild white hair on the bushy wig stood on end, covering Donny's naturally blonde hair completely. The matching mustache flopped over his mouth making it nearly invisible. The suit he wore was brown tweed and looked like it had belonged to Probie in his younger and far less fashionable days. An NCI S lab coat, clearly borrowed from his Aunt Abby, topped off the ensemble. It was hilarious and suited the junior autopsy gremlin perfectly.<p>

"Hi, Uncle Tony," Leigh called, pushing her way passed Donny and through the door without waiting to be invited. Not that he would've expected her to. They were family and the twins were as comfortable in his home as they would've been their own or Gibbs'. She was dressed in a track suit and soccer jersey and carrying a soccer ball, which fit, given that, at 13, her current ambition was to be a professional soccer star.

"We just wanted to come by and say hi," Katie explained, following her sister inside. She was dressed from head to toe in black with a headband bearing black cat's ears perched on her head and a black nose and whiskers drawn on her face. "We know you're not really doing trick-or-treat; that's okay."

"Like the costume?" Donny asked, grinning at him and showing a prominently missing tooth. Tony realized with a start that it was probably one of the last he had to lose. The kids were growing up. This might be the last year that they would actually come around for trick-or-treating, or at least for the treat part of it, he corrected. If their teenage years were anything like his own, tricks and pranks would likely become the focus of their Halloween nights for some years to come.

"Like it?" Tony echoed. "Man, it's amazing."

"I thought of it myself," Donny told him proudly.

"You did a great job, Gremlin," Tony said. Donny grumbled at the use of the familiar nickname Tony had tagged him with in infancy, but, as usual, Tony ignored him.

"You look beat," Tim said, bringing up the rear and closing the door as he stepped inside.

Tony shot him a scathing look. "You know what this week's been like. You try looking daisy fresh after you've been up for 36 hours straight. Come to think of it; why aren't you working? Your team's been as busy as mine."

"The same reason you're not," Tim replied. "Abby's still processing the evidence."

"Mama's up to her elbows in evidence," Leigh added. "We nearly didn't get to come trick-or-treating at all."

"Yeah," Donny agreed. "Dad says he's got so many 'guests' that he's thinking about hanging a no vacancy sign on the autopsy door, and Mom is trying to get everything ready for a funeral tomorrow. If Uncle Tim hadn't come to the rescue, I'd have been stuck at home or trick-or-treating at NCI S like we did when we were babies."

Tony grinned at that. Desk to desk trick-or-treating had been something of a tradition when the gremlin and the twins were toddlers. That had been fun. It'd probably been the only time since his own childhood that he hadn't dreaded Halloween. "That was fun," he said aloud. "It's too bad you guys grew out of it. Next thing I know, you guys will be too old for trick-or-treating all together. You'll be running around with all the other teenage hoodlums throwing eggs that cars and TPing houses."

"They'd better not," Tim warned, giving all three children a stern look.

From the horrified look on Katie's face, Tony doubted he had anything to worry about from that quarter. Leigh and Donny, however, were another story, if their badly hidden smirks were anything to go by.

"Come on now, Probie," Tony teased, grinning. "Don't be such a stick in the mind. From what I hear, you played a prank or two yourself in your teenage years."

"You did?" Katie said, turning to her father in shock.

Tim shot Tony a look that could have cut glass. Then, he shrugged and turned to Katie. "I did," he admitted. The tips of his ears burned fiery red, and he looked decidedly uncomfortable.

"What did you do, Daddy?" Leigh asked, eyeing her father with a mix of surprise and curiosity.

"Yeah, Uncle Tim," Donny piped up, "what did you do? Did you egg cars when you were a teenager?"

Tim snorted. "Are you crazy? I lived on a military base. My father was an officer. Every MP on base knew I was Commander McGee's kid. I'd have had to have been crazy to try something like that."

"That so, McGee," Tony teased. "I seem to remember you telling me about a prank you and some friends played on the base CO."

"Daddy!" Leigh exclaimed, shocked. "You pranked the CO. Seriously? What happened? What did you do? Did you get caught?"

"It wasn't just me," Tim explained. "There were about 15 of us, pretty much all of the kids my age, including the CO's son. We snuck into his office and moved all of his furniture out onto the tarmac." Donny and Leigh both broke into laughter. Katie was staring at him as though he had suddenly been inhabited by an alien life form.

"Wicked!" Donny said. "That is so cool, Uncle Tim. How did you pull it off? Did you get caught?"

"It was pretty simple actually. Half the group diverted the MPs attention with a fake party on the other side of the base. Jeff, the CO's son, lifted his dad's office key, and the rest of us moved the furniture."

"Pretty clever, Probie," Tony admitted, sounding impressed despite himself. "Did it work? Without getting caught, I mean?"

"Yeah, it did," Tim admitted, grinning. "I've always regretted I didn't think to wire a hidden camera in his office though so we could see his face when he found it. I can tell you it was still pretty red when he came storming out looking for his furniture. He was furious when he found it on the tarmac." He was laughing by then unable to hold on to his serious dad persona despite all of his best intentions.

"I can't believe you didn't get caught," Leigh said. "You always catch me."

Tim shrugged. "I didn't grow up in a family of trained investigators. My dad would have never thought to check security footage or run fingerprints. I would so would your mom, your Uncle Tony or your Uncle Gibbs."

"That is so not fair," Leigh groused. "I can't get away with anything."

Tony laughed, reaching out to tousle her hair. "Them's the breaks, kid." Leigh glared at him, making him laugh harder.

"Besides, getting away with it isn't all it's cracked up to be," Tim added. "I was a nervous wreck for weeks thinking we were going to get caught. I jumped every time my dad came through the door. I just knew sooner or later he was going to find out, and I'd be in for it. If he'd found out, my ears would probably still be ringing from the lecture, and I'd have been grounded for the rest of the summer."

"At least you would have only gotten grounded," Leigh said." I'd be lucky if I could sit by the end of the summer."

"Maybe," Tony conceded, "but it's possible that your dad would understand, given that he's done some of the same things himself, right, Probie?"

Tim made a noncommittal noise and quickly changed the subject. He needed to get the kids out of their before any more spirits of Halloweens past came back to haunt him, and Donny and Leigh decided to make the ghosts of Halloweens past become the ghosts of Halloweens future.


End file.
